A Democratic Socialist Blog

Women at War Trilogy Part 1

The American Labor Party is an equality party and the focus is of Solidarity with out catering to different interest groups. How ever we seem to have a re asserted issue on feminism.
Tennessee has become the first state in the nation to pass a law criminalizing women for their pregnancy outcomes. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam took the 10 days allotted to him to consider the advice of doctors, addiction experts and reproductive health groups urging him to veto the punitive and dangerous measure that allows prosecutors to charge a woman with criminal assault if she uses illegal drugs during her pregnancy and her fetus or newborn is considered harmed as a result. Haslam ignored these recommendations — and the recommendations of nearly every major medical association, including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other major medical associations — joined by local doctors and addiction specialists — have warned that measures criminalizing pregnant women will only discourage them from seeking prenatal care and drug treatment. These concerns were made expressly clear to the governor by groups like SisterReach, a Tennessee-based reproductive justice group and Healthy & Free Tennessee, a state-wide reproductive health coalition.

The movie Phelomena shows how women can be easily exploited. In the movie A world-weary political journalist picks up the story of a woman’s search for her son, who was taken away from her decades ago after she became pregnant and was forced to live in a convent.
The plot begins with Philomena Lee (marvelously played by Judi Dench) , a retired Irish woman living in England with her grown daughter, staring at a small old photograph of a little boy about 3 years old. When her daughter, Jane (Anna Maxwell Martin), asks, Philomena reveals a secret she’s kept all her adult life – that when she was a young girl in Ireland she had a son out of wedlock that she was forced, very much against her will, to give up for adoption. The details of her story are revealed in flashbacks in which we see young Philomena (a compelling performance by Sophie Kennedy Clark) held in one of Ireland’s now infamous Magdalene Asylums, institutions run by various orders of nuns where many young Irish girls of the time were sent for getting pregnant (as well as any number of other “improprieties” such as engaging in prostitution, being promiscuous or sometimes just for flirting), becoming virtual prisoners – and slave labor – beyond the reach of the secular law and with no hope of appeal. She has been haunted by this her entire life, always wondering what became of her little boy, and finding her every attempt to find out thwarted by the implacable bureaucracy of the Irish church.

At the same time, Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan in a deft counterpart to Dench), a former adviser to the current Labour government at the time, has just lost his job due to a minor scandal due to something he said. Given the sack in his mid-fifties, Martin is at loose ends, unsure of what to do with himself, vacillating between taking up running or pursuing a vaguely-formed notion of writing a book on Russian history. Prior to working in government though, Martin was a journalist of sorts, and while at a party an editor friend of his suggest that perhaps he should try his hand at doing a “human interest” story. Jane, who happened to be at the party, overhears this and approaches Martin with the story of her mother’s dilemma over her lost son, thinking that perhaps he can help. Martin, who had openly said he wasn’t interested in doing human interest story as he considered them nothing but fluff, brushes her off. But later, when pondering his options, he finds himself drawn back to Jane’s idea. He gets her name and number from another friend and calls her to set up a meeting with Philomena, and soon they’re off, going first to the convent in Ireland, where Martin learns firsthand just what Philomena has been up against. I essence, Phelomina sons is kidnapped and sold off, and in her teen years faces slave labor conditions.
In modern times women are pimped out on welfare to work for free, while the employer makes a profit from the government. Also, The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously dismissed the largest class action lawsuit in history filed by 1.5 million current and former female employees of Wal-Mart, who say they were allegedly paid less and promoted less often than their male counterparts. The Court found women who worked at Wal-Mart did not have enough in common to constitute a “class” in a class action lawsuit. It did not address whether Wal-Mart had discriminated against women, but in writing for the minority in part of the court’s ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the “plaintiffs’ evidence, including class members’ tales of their own experiences, suggests that gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s company culture.” We speak with former Wal-Mart employee Stephanie Odle, one of the original plaintiffs in the case. We also discuss the “limits of a courtroom remedy” in this case, and Wal-Mart’s anti-union efforts with Liza Featherstone, author of “Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker’s Rights at Wal-Mart.”
In total, poor and working women and their children are vulnerable and ripe for exploitation and victimization.